Opera Arias & More, Transcribed For The Piano.
Program «Λυρισμός και Θάλασσα» 

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770-1827), Sonata no. 26, op. 81a “Les Adieux”
i. Adagio: Allegro
ii. Andante Espressivo
iii. Vivacissimamente 

Claude Debussy (1862-1918), Estampes
i. Pagodes
ii. La soirée dans Grenade
iii. Jardins sous la pluie

M. Ravel, Jeux d’Eau 

F. Chopin, Mazurkas: op. 63 no. 1, op. 63 no. 2, KK no. 5, Fantaisie-Impromptu 

F. Mendelssohn, Venetian Songs: op. 19 no. 6, op. 30, no. 6 (from “Songs Without Words”) 

D. Lauragkas / Varvaresos: The Fishingboat 

C. Saint-Saens/Liszt/Horowitz: Danse Macabre

BIOGRAPHY

Vassilis Varvaresos

“Varvaresos not only has a natural yet finely honed technique, it springs as one with the wide scope of profound musicianship. Varvaresos engaged his audience with a performance that sizzled from start to finish.”

• New York Concert Review

March 2012 marked Mr. Varvaresos’ Carnegie Hall recital debut, to both audience and critical acclaim. Immediately following his debut, he was asked to play at the White House for President Barrack Obama.

Being re-invited to the Athens Festival of 2012, Mr. Varvaresos will be making his inaugural appearance at the Herodeion theater in Athens, performing Prokofiev’s Concerto no. 2 with the Athens State Symphony Orchestra.

In December 2010 Mr. Varvaresos was named Most Promising Young Greek Artist from the Critics’ Association of Greece. The dynamic young Greek pianist is also the 1st Prize winner of the Maria Chairogiorgou-Sigara 3rd International Piano Competition, held in Athens in May 2010.

Winner of the coveted First Prize in the Young Concert Artists International Auditions at the age of 14, his recital debuts in New York and Washington were acclaimed. The New York Concert Review ended thus:
“Following this great program greatly played, Vassilis Varvaresos played a spicy Greek dance with all the exuberance and heartiness of a soul in love with life.” The Washington Post’s headline called him a “Young Master on the Rise.”

Mr. Varvaresos made his sensational New York orchestra debut in 2007 at Lincoln Center performing Lowell Liebermann’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Juilliard Orchestra under the baton of Andreas Delfs. In October 2010, as a special guest of the Archbishop of the Greek-Orthodox Church of America, Mr. Varvaresos appeared with the Manhattan Symphony Orchestra in Chopin’s Piano Concerto in e minor at Alice Tully Hall, while in the winter of 2008 he was asked to be the soloist with the Athens State Symphony Orchestra, representing Greece on a two-week tour of China, on the occasion of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Mr. Varvaresos, on this occasion, performed in front of a total of 6,000 people.

Mr. Varvaresos’ made his recital debut in Athens, Greece appearing at the 2010 Athens Festival. During the same summer he has appeared in recital and chamber music concerts in Mykonos, Greece and in Constantinople and Cyprus.

Mr. Varvaresos’ previous seasons included concerts in Vienna’s legendary Musikverein, performances of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Cyprus Symphony Orchestra in Leukosia and Lemesos under the baton of Spiros Pisinos, recitals in Mykonos, Greece and a featured concert at the International Piano Festival of Gijón, Spain. Since then, he has performed on numerous occasions both in the U.S. and abroad. Highlight performances include an appearance with the Westmoreland Symphony Orchestra, where Mr. Varvaresos performed Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue in a double-bill special event as well as concerto and recital appearances in the U.S. and his native Greece.

As a soloist with orchestra in the United States, Mr. Varvaresos has performed Grieg’s Piano Concerto with the Victoria Symphony in Texas, Tchaikovsky’s Concerto No. 1 with the Westmoreland Symphony (PA), Chopin’s Concerto No. 2 with the Dearborn (MI) Orchestra Society, Haydn’s Concerto in D Major with the Hartford Symphony, Mozart’s Concerto No. 5 with the Modesto (CA) Symphony, Mozart’s Concerto no. 20 with the Altoona (PA) Symphony, Rachmaninov’s Concerto no. 1 with the JCC of Greater Washington, and Beethoven’s Concerto no. 3 with the Sacramento Youth Symphony.

Mr. Varvaresos’ performances in his native Greece include the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto at the Megaron Hall with the Athens State Symphony Orchestra, Solon Michailides’s Piano Concerto and the Grieg Piano Concerto in the Megaron Hall of Athens, Rachmaninov’s Concerto no. 2, Mozart’s Concerto no. 20 and Beethoven’s Concerto No. 3, with the Orchestra of Thessaloniki. He has performed numerous times on Greek State Television, as well as on television in Italy, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. Mr. Varvaresos has represented Greece in a special “EuroConcert” at the Museum of Modern Art in Helsinki, at the Greek Embassy in Milan, and for the U.S. Ambassador to Greece. He has also performed as a recitalist in Austria, Germany, France, Italy, The Czech Republic, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia.

Mr. Varvaresos is a founding member of Fourtissimo!, a group of four award-winning pianists whose goal is to reinvent the concert going experience through tasteful and uncompromising experimentation: unorthodox choice of repertoire, questions and choices concerning the form of the piano recital, and original compositions/transcriptions that test the limitations of the instrument and point the way towards a new type of instrumental virtuosity and inventiveness. The group’s debut at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall in October 2010 received immediate audience and critical acclaim.

Mr. Varvaresos is also active as a composer. His dance composition Three Etudes was chosen to represent the Juilliard School in a Dance Forum hosted by the Pallucca Schule in Dresden, Germany in October of 2007. He has written ten film scores, including “Ellsworth Kelly: Fragments” and “Sir John Soane: An English Architect, an American Legacy” produced by the Checkerboard Film Foundation. He has also composed the score for the short film “Hardwood”.

Born in Thessaloniki, Greece in 1983, Mr. Varvaresos started studying music at the age of five, and received a scholarship to the Conservatory of Northern Greece. He continued his studies at the Conservatory with Milena Mollova. He won First Prize in the 1995 Petar Konjovic International Competition in Belgrade, the 1996 Pan-Hellenic Young Artist Competition in Athens, and was chosen as one of eleven young musicians from around the world to perform in Monte Carlo in a special “little Mozarts” concert organized by Italy’s RAI TV. Mr. Varvaresos holds a bachelor of music degree and a master of music degree from the Juilliard School, where he studied with Jerome Lowenthal. His paper on Claude Debussy, which won the Scholastic Distinction Award from the Juilliard School, was published in Greece by Kodikas Publications. In May 2011 Mr. Varvaresos received his Doctorate in Piano Performance from the Juilliard School. He was a student of Jerome Lowenthal, Yoheved Kaplinsky, and Robert MacDonald.

Mr. Varvaresos is currently pursuing the prestigious Diplôme d’Artiste-Interpète degree at the Conservatoire Nationale et Superieur de Musique et de Danse in Paris, France. He studies with Michel Dalberto.

He has been recipient of Musical Studies Grants from the Bagby Foundation and George & Marie Vergottis Scholarships at The Juilliard School. Since 2008, he has also been the recipient of the Gina Bachauer Foundation Grant for Outstanding Talent in Music and Onassis Foundation Grant.

Το άρθρο Piano Recital, Vassilis Varvaresos εμφανίστηκε πρώτα στο Vergottis Foundation.

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Lauragkas’ Arias and his music in the context of his time

PROGRAM

• GIACOMO PUCCINI (1858-1924): La Bohème, Mimi?! Speravo di trovarvi qui…
• ALFREDO CATALANI (1854-1893): La Wally, Ebben, n’ andrò lontana…
• GIOACHINO ROSSINI (1792-1868): Il barbiere di Siviglia, Largo al factotum della città…
• RUGGIERO LEONCAVALLO (1858-1919): Pagliacci, Qual fiamma avea nel guardo!… Stridono lassù…
• GIUSEPPE VERDI (1813-1901): Il Trovatore, Il balen del suo sorriso…
• DIONYSIS LAURAGKAS (1860-1941): Θύμηση
• DIONYSIS LAURAGKAS (1860-1941): Φρόσω, Αδύνατον! Μην επιμένεις άλλο…
• SPIROS SAMARAS (1861-1917): Μάννα και γυιός
• JULES MASSENET (1842-1912): Le Cid, Pleurez, mes yeux…
• GEORGES BIZET (1838-1875): Carmen, Votre toast, je peux vous le rendre…
• GIACOMO PUCCINI (1858-1924): Tosca, Vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore…
• UMBERTO GIORDANO (1867-1948): Andrea Chenier, Nemico della patria!!…
• GIUSEPPE VERDI (1813-1901): Il Trovatore, Mira, di acerbe lagrime… Vivrà!…

BIOGRAPHY

Cellia Costea
Soprano, born in Romania, she studied music at the National University of Music, Bucharest. She received several prizes in international competition including the China International Vocal Competition (Beijing, 2002), Francisco Vinas International Singing Contest (Barcelona, 2003) and Valsesia Musica Competition (2004). Her repertory includes Countess Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro (Vienna State Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Amsterdam), Liu in Turandot (Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Bergen, Oslo), Elisabetta in Don Carlo (Athens Concert Hall), Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni (Vienna State Opera, Marseilles, Liege), Leonora in Il Trovatore (Italy, Spain, Athens). Recently, she sang Tosca (Athens Concert Hall, Frankfurt, Palermo, Beijing, Amsterdam Concertgebouw). For her interpretation on this particular role and her contribution to Greek opera she was awarded the 2011 Grand Music Award of the Greek Theatre and Music Critics.

Dimitris Tiliakos
Dimitris Tiliakos was born in Rodos and first studied viola at the Athens conservatory, before he took up his singing lessons with Kostas Paskalis. In 1996 he was the first prize winner of the Maria Callas foundation and finalized his studies at the Hochschule für Theater und Musik in Munich. Shortly thereafter he made his debut at the Prinzregententheater in Munich in the role of Conte Almaviva in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro and was awarded the W.D. Fassbänder-prize for young opera singers. Between 1997 and 2003 Dimitris was a member of the Nuremberg state opera where he performed the major parts of the baritone repertory.

Since 2004 he has been freelancing and quickly made a name for himself through a series of guest performances, including the most important opera houses and concert halls: Opera National de Paris (Don Carlo, Macbeth), London Royal Opera House (Don Carlos), Opera de Monte Carlo (La Bohème), Sala São Paulo, Teatro La Fenice (Manon Lescaut), Polish National Opera (Otello, Carmen), Athens Megaron (Simone Boccanegra), Tokyo Opera City, Greek National Opera (Don Giovanni, Carmen, Trovatore), Tchaikovsky Bolshoi Hall, Theater Bern (Carmen), Metropolitan Opera (La Bohème), Teatro Real-Madrid (Les Huquenots), Don Giovanni at the Bolshoi Opera, Trovatore at the Opera de Nice and the Theatre de la Monnaie.

Dimitris’ future projects include the main roles in: Macbeth at the Teatro Real in Madrid, La Forza del destino at the Cologne Opera, Simon Boccanegra at the Opera de Nice, Nabucco at the Vlaamse Opera and La Traviata at the Nederlandse Opera.

Dimitris Yakas
Dimitris Yakas was born in Athens in 1957. He studied piano at the National Conservatory in Athens, from where he graduated in 1977. He continued his education at the ECOLE NORMALE DE MUSIQUE DE PARIS (piano, chamber music and piano coaching [formation de chef de chant]) and had lessons in vocal accompaniment with Dalton Baldwin.

In 1982, as a result of winning a competition, he took up a position as coach at the Paris Opera, where he remained until 1991. During this period he worked with many major conductors and singers, with whom he gave concerts in Paris as well as other French cities and at festivals (Tours, Pau, Strasbourg, Festival de Marmande, de Sully, du Comminges etc). He worked many times as coach at the Opera de Lyon at the invitation of Kent Nagano. In 1990 he played at two concerts in Paris, at which the complete works of Berlioz for voice and piano were performed (with M. Olmeda, B. Uria-Monzon etc).

In 1991 he settled in Athens and became one of the principal collaborators of the Greek National Opera and the Megaron: The Athens Concert Hall, working with conductors such as M. Viotti, R. Bonynge, D. Renzetti, J. Arnel, A. Allemandi, etc. He has coached the singers for the world premieres of many operas written by Greek composers [Mikis Theodorakis: MEDEA, Bilbao 1991; Thanos Mikroutsikos: THE RETURN OF HELENA, Athens 1993; Arghyris Kounadis: BACCHAE, Athens 1996 etc.] and has played for master classes of J. Pilou, Ch. Ludwig, D. Evangelatos, Anna Tomowa-Sintow, Alison Pearce, etc. He regularly gives concerts as an accompanist in Greece and abroad (M. Krilovic, J. Pilou, A. Baltsa, D. Evangelatos, D. Kavrakos, El. Vidal, A. Cognet, D. Theodossiou, etc.).

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Το άρθρο Lauragkas & Opera with Cellia Costea & Dimitris Tiliakos εμφανίστηκε πρώτα στο Vergottis Foundation.

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Life & Times of Dionysios Lauragkas
Presented by Maestro Byron Fidetzis.

BIOGRAPHY

Byron Fidetzis

Byron Fidetzis was born in Thessaloniki. He studied violoncello and advanced theory at the State Conservatory of Thessaloniki. Upon a scholarship granted by the Hellenic Foundation for State Bursaries, he moved to Vienna where he continued with his cello studies at the Hochschule für Musik under the expert guidance of Vladimir Orloff, A. Navarra and S. Benes, receiving his diploma in 1975. Alongside his cello studies, he attended the class of Hans Swarowski in orchestra conduction from 1973 to 1977, in which year he gained his diploma at chef d’orchestre. He has also attended seminars held by conductors Miltiades Caridis (Vienna) and Otmar Suitner (Weimar).

Byron Fidetzis has co-operated as a soloist and conductor with all the Greek and many foreign orchestras in various concerts throughout Greece (festivals of Athens, Corfu, Herakleion, the Demetria Festival of Thessaloniki, the Manolis Kalomiris Festival of Samos) as well as abroad (Azerbaijan, Armenia, Austria, Albania, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Czech Republic, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Cyprus, Turkey, Brazil, Mexico, China, Japan, S. Korea and others).

For many years he has been co-operating with the Greek National Opera House, and from 1985 to 1992 he was permanent conductor of the House’s Orchestra. From September 1990 to 1992 he was the chief conductor of the Aikaterinenburg State Philharmonic Orchestra of the former Soviet Union, and since 1992 he has been Guest Conductor of Cappella Russia Orchestra in Moscow (the official orchestra of the Ministry of Culture in the former Soviet Union). He was also Honorary Guest Conductor of the Symphony Orchestra of Pasardjik in Bulgaria up until 1999; during the period 1999-2001 he also served as artistic director at the same orchestra. During the period 2000-2005 he was chief conductor of the Symphony Orchestra of the Municipality of Thessaloniki. Since 1987 he has been permanent conductor to the Athens State Orchestra and from 2004 to 2011 he also was its Artistic Director.

He has recorded Spiro Samara’s operas Rhea, la Martire, La Biondinetta (or, Historie d’Amour), Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle; Paolo Carrer’s operas Frossini, Despo; D. Mitropoulos opera Soeur Beatrice; Manolis Kalomiris’s operas Anatoli (Sunrise), Konstantinos Paleologos. As for symphonic works he has conducted the world premiere recording of Skalkottas’ 36 Greek Dances. Also he has recorded The Sea by Skalkottas, Manolis Kalomiris’ two first Symphonies, namely The Levendia Symphony (of Manliness) and Of Simple and Good People; the complete orchestral works of Y. Constantinidis; and N. Mantzaros’s Ode to Freedom in its original, conclusive form. He has also recorded works by such notable composers as Sicilianos, Dragatakis, Evangelatos, Lialios, Lavrangas, Varvoglis, Petridis, Riades, Antoniou, Theodorakis, Xanthoudakis, Koukos, Zanas and many others. The recording companies he works with are LYRA in Greece, BIS and Naxos internationally.

He has taught Musical Form and History of Greek Music at the Musical Studies Faculties of the Athens University and of the Ionian University in Corfu. Also he has lectured History and Aesthetics of the Greek Opera at post-graduate students of the Athens University (School of Philosophy, Faculty for Theatrical Studies).

He has orchestrated, played and recorded the works Rapsody for a piano Nr.2 (Nightsong) by Manolis Kalomiris, Three Greek Songs by Antonin Dvorzak, Hymn to Bacchus and the opera Tigraby Spiro Samara.

In 1975, the Athens Academy presented him with the Spyros Motsenigos Music Award; he has also received awards by the National Greek Opera Friends Association and several other constitutions. The Greek Composers Association has duly acknowledged his contribution to Greek music, unanimously electing him Honorary Member in 1986. Byron Fidetzis has also received distinctions by the Union of Drama and Music Greek Critics for his recording output. In 2010 he was nominated a honorary Doctorate at the School of Philosophy, Department for Musical Studies of the Athens University.

Το άρθρο Life & Times of Dionysios Lauragkas εμφανίστηκε πρώτα στο Vergottis Foundation.